David Dodd Lee

REALISM

Every time I

make a keystroke

A dollar is removed

From my bank account

Via direct

"Subtraction." I am

Exiled here in the name

Of what? The shock

Of watching a man hit

Another man with

A bag of broken

Lanterns, this mean-

Spirited auto

Mechanic? Shy and

Cowering—that's how

We perceive the other

Two characters.

One wants love. One wants

Methamphetamine.

What does the third one

Want? O let's all write

A lyric poem. In the

Final verses the

Soul shifts silver and

Black like window wind.

Now for the novel:

Nobody dies, or prospers.

AUTONOMOUS  
 
 
If I drink a liquid and there are chunks floating 
in it it's disgusting unless the chunks are ice. My 
mind, the files that are my mind. Let me be ice 
 
as I pass from one world to another, intact. What 
I fear is waking up not me. But why fear that? We 
are hunters but mostly gatherers. Waking into the day 
 
is a dissolve, a subtraction. We lose who we are 
as we attach once again to our things. Emerson:  
"I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."

David Dodd Lee is the author of ten books of poetry, including Animalities (Four Way Books, 2014), as well as a forthcoming book of collages, erasure poems, and original poems, entitled Unlucky Animals. In 2020, his short story, “Hawks,” was selected for inclusion in the annual Best Short Fictions anthology, published by Sonder Press. He writes and makes visual art and kayaks in Northern Indiana, where he lives on the St. Joseph River. He is Associate Professor of English at Indiana University South Bend, where he is also Editor-in-Chief of 42 Miles Press.